According to Chandler Epp, spokesperson for DeMoss Group, "The site was selected as the location for a yet-to-be-named museum to house The Green Collection, the world's largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts.

“After an 18-month search in cities including Dallas and New York, the museum’s board chose the nation’s capital—a destination known for its world-class museums—to be the location of this future museum,” said Mark DeMoss, spokesperson for the Museum of the Bible and member of its board.

Plans include reconfiguring the WDC into a non-sectarian, scholarly-focused, national museum that will illustrate how the Bible came to be, its impact on the world throughout the ages and the story that is told in this best-selling book of all time.

The future museum will house The Green Collection, which has 55,000 ancient biblical texts and artifacts—including one of the world’s largest private collections of Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest-surviving New Testament texts in Jesus’ household language and other antiquities dating from the first century BCE to Torah scrolls that survived the Holocaust. The museum also plans to display items borrowed from other prominent collections from around the world.

With several years from opening, no design plans, construction timelines or completion dates are yet available.

“Our intent is for this museum to showcase both the Old and New Testaments, arguably the world’s most significant pieces of literature, through a non-sectarian, scholarly approach that makes the history, scholarship and impact of the Bible on virtually every facet of society accessible to everyone,” said DeMoss.

Items from The Green Collection continue to be displayed around the world through traveling exhibitions.

About The Green Collection

Named after The Green Family (founders and leaders of Hobby Lobby, the world's largest privately owned art and crafts retailer), The Green Collection is the world's largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts.

The second-largest private collectionof Dead Sea Scrolls, all of which are unpublished

The world’s largest private collection of Jewish scrolls, including Torahs that survived the Spanish Inquisition, scrolls confiscated by the Nazis and recovered in concentration camps and others from across the globe

One of the world’s largest holdings of unpublished biblical and classical papyri, including texts that date back to the lostLibrary of Alexandria